Edward Lee
Slither
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to: Mike Anthony and Michael Kennedy for my wonderful Header movie, Bob Strauss for indefatigable proofing; Cedric Perez for tech stuff; Shay Prentiss and Christine Torres; Noel and Lance at X Ray Productions; Jen and Monica from Rue Morgue; Kelli and Kelly from Horror Web; Sascha Mamczak and Francis Hoch; Juan Carlos Poujade; Barry Anderson, Thomas Deja, Aaron Williams, Christine Morgan, Nick Yak. Also Kathy, Mindi, Pam, Tess, and Wendy.
PROLOGUE
When Carol noticed the two ticks attached to her nipples, she very understandably screamed.
She screamed right into Howie's face.
Parrots screeched, lifting off from palm trees; other animals tore away through the brambles. Were he not so shocked himself, it might even have occurred to Howie that Carol's scream barely sounded human. It sounded, instead, machinelike: a bad bearing in a highrpm motor.
"Ticks!" Carol shrieked after the scream.
Howie stared at the breasts he'd been dying to see all month, and then his mouth fell open. He thought: Holy Jesus God Almighty! What are those THINGS?
And the things-barely the size of jelly beansseemed to be quivering…
Are they… are they really ticks?
"Get them off, get them off, get them off, Howie!" She shuddered against the tree, her smart and very expensive Victoria's Secret "tankini" top on the ground. All that remained in the way of apparel were stylish hot-pink Converse tennis shoes and the tiny floral bikini bottom. Howie had spent the entirety of his junior year yearning to see her like this…
But not while she's screaming bloody murder with two-two-two THINGS on her nipples!
She slid down to the ground, probably close to clinical shock now. "Relax, relax!" He tried to calm her. "Don't pass out! I don't think they're ticks and I don't think they're leeches…"
What, then?
Slugs?
Carol's face was paling. Her body began to convulse like slow electrocution.
Oh, shit! Howie hunkered down, gingerly cupped one tangerine-firm breast, and tweezed one of the things off her left nipple.
It didn't let go at first, and he couldn't help but imagine the tiniest mandibular hooks sunk into the tender nipple-tip, drawing out blood. When it finally came off, a few minute specks of blood welled up. The bug, tick, slug, or whatever it was felt akin to a cooked pea, only this "pea" was shiny, as if wet, and a strange yellowish white, while its outer sheath possessed scarlet dots. Howie turned the thing over, pinched between his fingertips, and squeezed…
Oh, Jesus, that's gross!
There were no mandibles-no hooks-but he thought he did detect the tiniest follicles retreat back into the thing's body. Some kind of parasitic slug or something, he guessed. When he tweezed it harder between his fingers, blood did indeed effuse, along with threads of some milky liquid.
He pulled the other one off Carol's right nipple and flicked it away.
"Carol?"
She'd already passed out, a shock of brandy-colored hair falling over her eyes.
Some weekend island shindig, he thought. What a bust. Got to get her back to the shack, got to tell Alan and Leona. And then, ever the gallant college student, Howie picked her up and carried her back down the trail.
For about twenty feet.
Oh, man!
She wasn't fat at all, but the opposite: trim, svelte, a pixie. Carrying away damsels in distress, however, was only easy in the movies. I'll never be able to get her back to the shack like this…
So he left her.
And he ran.
It had been Alan's idea to bring the girls out to Pritchard's Key. "It's the perfect party place," he assured Howie. "Nobody goes there. The island's surrounded by big-ass rocks, and there's no beachfront. No place to dock a boat."
"Then how are we going to dock there?" Howie asked.
"I know where the inlets are," Alan answered, and there're only a few, but if we get there at high tide, we motor the Whaler right in neat as a pin, and no one can run us off-not even cops."
It sounded great to Howie, and what Alan told him next sounded even greater: "Carol finally dumped that jock she was dating, and now she's hot for you, man. She even said you were cute!"
Howie nearly choked on his Corona Light. "How do you know?"
"Leona told me the other night when I was done giving her the best sex of her life," Alan proudly revealed, and Leona and Carol are best friends. Buddy-bro, we'll get those girls out to Pritchard's Key, get 'em all pissy drunk on Jaeger Bombs, and ball their brains out. They'll probably even do that little lezbo thing they do-and let us watch."
That was all Howie needed to hear.
There was a cabin in the middle of the island that Alan already knew about. "Party Central, man." It looked more like some kind of old maintenance shed when Howie finally saw it. "What the hell is this building doing on an island that's inaccessible?" he asked.
"It used to be some kind of army post," Alan informed him, "but I mean, like, a long time ago, in the fifties or something. They finally closed it down. Anyway, this building was some kind of storage shed."
Howie couldn't have cared less.
Alan and Leona had been setting up the Coleman stove when Carol winked Howie over. "Let's go for a walk," she whispered.
It had been a long walk.
Howie knew he was good-looking, and had a certain style that women liked, but Carol was a dish-anda-half. All long lines and curves, sleek tan legs, broadhipped and flat-bellied. She's the best-looking hunk of stuff I've ever been out with, he realized with some incredulity. And she's ALL OVER me! Once they'd had a nice, long hand-holding walk across the island…
… that was it.
One second they'd been traipsing along, and the next second they were lip-locked.
"I don't usually lust after guys," she confessed through a pant, "but I've been lusting after you for a year…"
And that's when she'd taken her top off-
– and started screaming at the two ticklike things stuck to her nipples.
As he ran, Howie found that the island was bigger than he'd thought. Where's the damn trail? He got lost very quickly, tramping through the lush, tropical woodland. If only he'd brought his cell phone. He wended his way farther and suddenly found himself standing in a bloom of sunlight, looking at water. The inlet, he realized, where they'd moored off Alan's Boston Whaler. But-
Wait a minute…
There was a boat tied off to some mangrove roots right there in front of him…
That's not our boat…
It was just a skiff with a little outboard in back. This must be one of the other inlets Alan was talking about, Howie realized. The small boat rocked gently in the water. So…
There was someone else on the island.
Howie stepped aboard the skiff, hoping dismally to find a radio, a cell phone, even a flare gun, but there was nothing. He picked up a small card on the floor.
CENTRAL FLORIDA WEST COAST TIDE TABLE, it read.
Makes sense, Howie thought. Someone else came out to the island to party, just like we did. Naturally they'd have a tide table because you couldn't get a boat in here during anything but high tide.
Howie frowned at the card. It was last month's table.
He picked up a slip of paper in the console. Credit card receipt. Herbster's Marine Exxon. The captain of the skiff had obviously filled his tank there. Same place Alan filled up this morning, Howie remembered. But this receipt was dated three weeks ago. The card holder's name was Robb White.
The gears of Howie's brain turned. Robb… White… Recognition. That guy on the football team, a senior, he recalled with a rising dread.
Dread because Robb White and some of his friends had been reported missing…
Three weeks ago.
Not cool, Howie thought. But this was just more to process; Carol was the priority. Howie scanned the skiff one last time for a radio or cell phone, came up with nothing, then turned to step off the craft.